


Milk

by odiko_ptino



Series: Featured Character: Athena [3]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen, world milk day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 21:05:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odiko_ptino/pseuds/odiko_ptino
Summary: Athena through the ages, trying to understand soft feelings.





	1. Prologue: Variation on a Meme

Zeus, the judge:  How do you plead?

Baby Hermes: [looks at lawyer]

Zeus, also the lawyer: [mouths ‘not guilty’]

Baby Hermes: hot milky

Apollo: *bangs head on desk* FFS Dad just throw him in Tartarus


	2. Amalthea

Amalthea was a goat.

Not a person, not by the way most define such things: many of these ancient beings never  _quite_  coalesced their will into a consciousness. Amalthea did have a will, and she did have emotion; but it’s difficult to say if she was ever aware of much that went on around her.  Her life was mostly dedicated to being a goat, and doing goaty things like eating and climbing and baa-ing.

To be sure, she wasn’t  _just_  a goat.  She was an ancient, somewhat primordial goat – one of those great beasts that appeared and roamed the world when it was still very new.  She had power, like all of her kind, though it was never on the same level as the Titans.  Her power was indirect; supportive.

Athena can remember the day Zeus found Amalthea.  Athena was still mostly a figment of his imagination, then; though in hindsight, there were already the signs that she was going to be something more.  She had a form: a child Zeus’ age, with a fearless stance and fearsome expression, and mounds of bright red hair, and bright silver eyes.  So strong was her image in his mind, that Zeus nearly felt he could reach out and touch her, after she gave him advice; encouraged him; helped him escape Cronus.

And yet, he could not touch her.  She was not yet more than a thought.

She could reach into the depths of his mind and pull out wisdom he didn’t know he had; share things he didn’t realize he knew; advise him to act on instincts that he was too stressed or afraid to look at clearly.  But his advisor was not real.  She could not give him warmth, nor sustenance.

Amalthea could, and did.

She had no wits about her, and could not converse with the young god Zeus, nor advise him.  But she had a motherly instinct, and an ability to protect and sustain.  She stood as his shield from Cronus’ eyes as Zeus hid beneath her mighty frame, when the Titan drew too near.  She retired to a cave at night, and Zeus curled in close against her warm hide and slept more peacefully than he ever did before or since.

Amalthea’s milk flowed, and sustained the child Zeus.  He drank in gratitude; exhausted from so much time spent foraging for food at the same time as he went on scouting missions, at the same time he evaded Cronus’ monsters… being able to come to Amalthea and drink her milk was a blessed relief on days when he found nothing else.  

He loved her; in a different way than he loves Athena; a different way than he loves Hera.  Amalthea sustained him with love when no others could or would.  

The ancient goat died, at some point before the battle with the Titans, while the soon-to-be-Olympians were preparing for that war.  Zeus thought she might have passed peacefully; a gift often denied to such beings. Athena does not remember this.  She was a ghost of her former self at this point, dormant in his brain, replaced by Prometheus and Helios and Poseidon and Hera.  She does not remember his grief, or the way he mourned her, or the way he honored her memory by placing a constellation of her in the sky, and creating the cornucopia of plenty from her horn to represent her sustenance, and using her hide with the greatest respect as his aegis, to represent the protection she gave to him.

Athena hadn’t realized the significance of any of these things.  They had already been there when she finally emerged into the world as a real person. She only comments, idly, on Zeus’ aegis one day, remarking that it seemed to serve as quite a shield.

This is a long, long time after the days of Amalthea.  Many centuries since Athena was a ghost in Zeus’ mind.  Amalthea has been gone for an age.  And yet, at the attention called to the aegis, he goes still, and his gaze distant.

“What do you remember of her?” he says, a rare direct reference to her existence back then.

“What do I remember of whom?” Athena asks.  

Zeus’ eyes well up, as he fingers the edges of the aegis.  It is a fine thing, decorated simply and never wearing out, no matter how much time has passed.  

“Amalthea.  My first mother, in a way.”

“Amalthea?  The goat?”  Athena distantly remembers.  The great and ancient beast.  Ghost-Athena had known that Zeus needed to get to her, for protection and a place of safety, in order to proceed with his plan to overthrow Cronus.  She understood, and still understands, the need for physical security before moving on to bigger things.  All the rest, though – the emotions that go with it – these elude her.

Zeus knows this about her. He knows her better than all the others do, how she struggles to understand the way all others seem to prefer feelings over logic.

He smiles through tears. “Yes.  The goat.  She loved me and sheltered me when I had little else.  I’ve borne her hide as my aegis all this time, to honor that protection. The aegis represents her.”

He hesitates, then unfastens the aegis from about his shoulders and offers it to Athena. “Perhaps it’s time that you wore it.”

Athena protests. “King Zeus – I can’t even pretend to grasp the significance this holds to you.  It would be wasted on me.”

“I think that’s why you should keep it,” he says, warmly.  “Maybe it’ll grow on you.”

Athena doubts it.  She simply doesn’t  _feel_  things the way he does; the way the others do.  She values the aegis for the protection it brings, but she can’t imagine the rest of it.  

Still, it is a fine aegis, and she can certainly make use of it in battle and elsewhere.  She’ll make an effort to preserve its condition, though; in case Zeus changes his mind and wants this memento of his goat-mother back.


	3. Snake Baby

There’s a certain sort of “expect the unexpected” that’s required of any member of the Hellenic Pantheon.  Things happen on the whims of powerful, impulsive beings, and it’s simply impossible to stop and gape over all of them.  Gods transform; mortals are transformed; cities and islands and seas and mountains are created in any number of outlandish fashion and vanish similarly. Reality changes daily in the middle days of the earth; and the Theoi take it all in stride.

Still, there are certain things that any goddess eternally sworn to virginity might expect to stay true, and  one of those things is “not being a mother.”

So Athena is caught wholly by surprise when reality flips in this regard, and she finds herself with a baby in her arms, and is apparently responsible for it.  

The circumstances leading to this had been appropriately momentous and weird: Athena had been taking a brief rest from her task in carrying a mountain from the Pallene peninsula over to be used in the Acropolis at Athens.  As she had been sitting there, the earth had abruptly opened up, and the enormous, matronly earthen features of Gaia emerged, holding a sleeping baby in her huge arms.

“Yours,” Gaia had spoken, in her low rumble of a voice, direct as usual.  

“Er,” Athena had said: “Actually, I’m sure you’re quite mistaken.  You see, I’m actually a virgin goddess, which precludes the possibility of any baby being mine – “

“Not interested,” Gaia had thrust the sleeping baby into Athena’s arms.  The infant began to blink awake.  “I did the hard part for you.  But this baby is yours.”

“How…?”

“You’re a goddess. He’s a god.  ‘Traditional’ isn’t necessary.”  Gaia had begun to sink back down, relinquishing the form she’d undertaken for this task and becoming ‘the earth’ once again.  “I speak this to you: conceived of sweat and tears, born from Gaia, he will race across the earth, fast as four steeds; and rule in Athens till he joins the stars.”

With that, the form of the goddess of the earth had vanished, leaving only bare earth and a bewildered virgin goddess.

The bewilderment doesn’t last long.  Athena is the goddess of wisdom, after all.  She makes her deductions and reaches a swift conclusion: why and how Gaia came to declare this baby as Athena’s.  This is easily confirmed when the baby shifts within its coarse blanket, revealing twisted, withered legs.

The handkerchief Athena had offered to Hephaestus, as he’d wept over the fallout of the affair with Aphrodite and Ares.  Her sweat; his tears.  She’d dropped it to the earth and forgotten it.  And now she holds in her arms the result of that off-handed moment.  

By rights, this baby is a god, then – and yet, not.  He was born from Gaia, by way of two other gods, in a very nonstandard fashion.  He doesn’t have the glow about him that indicates an immortal, though he does have a sturdiness and intelligence about him, that indicates he is other than purely human.  

That’s easily fixed. A simple task: leave the infant with Athenian princess caregivers, locked in a box with her sacred serpent until the divinity within the snake passes into the child’s body.  After a period, he gains immortality and can probably be handed off to Chiron for training until he reaches adulthood. Simple!  

………..A mere day later, she is holding the same infant, quite a bit fussier now than he had been before. The princesses had immediately opened the box after being told not to; disrupted the magic at work and left the child half-mortal as it had been before.   _Very_  irritating.

“I thought I heard crying,” comes an awkwardly-timed, familiar voice.

Hephaestus is riding his donkey, Carrot, and leading a goat behind them.  The blacksmith god offers her his small smile as he approaches, but his face quickly registers confusion at the odd sight of Athena and an infant.

“Uh….”

“Gaia emerged and gave me this abandoned baby.  He is destined to rule Athens,” Athena says, truthfully.  She isn’t sure that Hephaestus should hear the rest or not. He’s… a delicate soul.  

“Ah.  Your city,” Hephaestus nods, accepting her misleading words at face value.  He carefully dismounts in an ungainly fashion and goes over to see.  Athena has wrapped the baby tightly in swaddling cloths, concealing the telltale limbs; but Hephaestus coos over the baby as he fusses.

“Poor kid looks hungry.  Have you fed him yet?”

“Fed him…?”

Hephaestus looks over at her, startled; then his face softens.  “You really don’t have that motherly instinct, do you?” he says, not unkindly, and unstraps a flask from Carrot’s saddle.  “As it happens… I have goat milk here…”

“You do?  Why?”

“Ahh, well… I suppose I can tell you,” he smiles again, awkwardly.  He dips a clean rag (which puts Athena in mind of this baby’s origin) into the flask of goat milk and gently touches the soaked rag to the baby’s lips.  The infant begins sucking with greed immediately.

“You see, Aglaia’s – well, apparently there are three more Graces due to make an appearance soon.”

“Three – you mean, she’s with child?  Triplets?!” Triplets are extremely auspicious, and can only be a source of glowing pride to Hephaestus after the trouble before.

“Yes!  Three at once…. I know it’s not done, for the father to help with nursing the babies, but… Well, I like the idea of helping out where I can.  She can’t feed three at the same time, after all.”

Athena smiles at him, watching the easy, gentle way his huge hands cup the back of this baby’s head, supporting it as the infant takes in the goat’s milk.  

“You’re quite a natural at this.”  

Hephaestus shrugs, re-soaking the rag with more milk.  “I’ve wanted kids forever.  I actually watched Aglaia and her sisters a few times for Thetis, back when they were kids… wow, that sounds a little creepy when I say it like that!”

Athena laughs. “Creepy is very subjective, Heph, especially on Olympus.”  Particularly this situation here: a god and a goddess, both produced with the aid of only one parent… and the father nursing their child, who was conceived and born with the assistance of a third party.

Athena’s usual explanations for her absence of motherly feelings is a bit of a red herring – she claims that, being born with no mother, she feels none of the maternal instincts herself.  And yet, here is Hephaestus exposing her lie: he was born with no father, but he can’t wait to be a father himself, and is even sneakily stealing some maternal responsibilities from his wife.  The real difference, of course, is that Athena was born from a need for a cool head; whereas Hephaestus was born from an aching longing for domestic happiness.

Athena looks down at the baby as he hungrily goes for Hephaestus’ second helping of goat milk. “It didn’t even occur to me to get goat’s milk.  Or any milk. I really have no motherliness in me.”

“You were going to raise this baby yourself?!”  Hephaestus looks genuinely shocked.

“I wasn’t planning to. Gaia gave me the baby and said he would have a fate tied to my city.  I originally gave him to three princesses and one of my sacred serpents, but they fucked it up almost immediately, so now I suppose it falls to me.”

He laughs at her rare use of a curse word.  “So the virgin goddess is raising an orphaned child herself.  Well, if you need any practical tips, you can ask me and Aglaia! I’m sure we’ll be troubleshooting every imaginable baby problem in double-pace time.”

“Triple-paced, rather,” Athena attempts to joke, and is secretly gratified when he chuckles.  Her jokes don’t usually land well.

She’ll wait, before telling him.  His domestic harmony with Aglaia is such a precious thing, something he’s wanted so badly for so long… she doesn’t want his success in this moment to be undermined by Gaia’s unexpected delivery and more dramatics.

In any case, it will be an interesting experiment, to see if the instinct to care for children can be learned, if it’s not inherited –

“What’d you name the little guy?” Hephaestus asks, interrupting her thoughts.

“Oh.”  That hadn’t occurred to her, either.  She really is bad at this.  “Um… ‘Erichthonius.’”

“’Very Chthonic One?’ Nice!  Appropriate choice!”


	4. Milky Way

“I feel I owe you an apology,” Athena says, without preamble.

Hera is seated with her cloak wrapped about her, staring at the new starry expanse in the sky.  It glitters; a wide and shining streak across the entirety of Ouranos’ magnificence.  Truthfully, it’s a thing of beauty.   Athena may not have a solid grasp on many of her step-mother’s subtleties, but she knows enough not to remark upon the beauty of this new celestial artwork.

“Fine,” Hera says. Her voice is without heat, which… is unusual.  Normally, Hera is a fountain of emotion, whether for good or for bad; much like Zeus himself.  Hera sounds flatly calm here.  Not unlike Athena, most days.

“I didn’t realize the violation,” Athena continues, surmising that things are not, in fact, ‘fine.’ “I have no motherly instincts of my own – ”

“You knew.  You wouldn’t have given me the bastard while I was sleeping, otherwise; and when I awoke, you would have stated his name. Mother or not, you knew.”

Athena winces but is determined to see this conversation through.  “I knew you’d object.  You hate all of them.  I didn’t want to upset you.  But I truly didn’t realize the violation.”

“I feel as though I have never hated anyone before I hated this bastard,” Hera says, still without her usual heat.  “All those that came before are like drops of water in the endless sea.”

“Queen Hera, the fault is mine.  You needn’t blame the infant.”  Athena frankly still doesn’t see the point of all the drama.  The child needed sustenance.  Hera was nursing Hebe at the time.  Of course, Hera wouldn’t want to nurse another of Zeus’ demigods… and yet the child needed milk, or he would die.  Rather than give Hera the agony of choosing, Athena had decided to keep the truth from her… and still thinks the idea would have worked, had not the infant nursed too strongly and caused Hera pain.

So Hera figured out who the baby Alcides really is.  But, well – he’s still a baby, who was dying of malnourishment and exposure.  Athena really wishes Hera could set aside her pride and penchant for melodramatics for once, but…

“You ought to have given the bastard to the harlot Leto.  Goddess of motherhood, yes?  She would surely have loved to give suckle to another of Zeus’ blessed sons.”

The hatred is in her words, not her voice, which is… eerie.  “…I would have.  I would not have troubled you at all.  Artemis intercepted me, though – she would not have Leto brought into it.”

“Clever girl.  Pity I had no such guardian.”  She pauses.  The cold light from Selene’s chariot, far overhead, and the new faint glow of the celestial swath, illuminates her face very becomingly.  Hera is quite beautiful; even Athena, with little natural appreciation for such things, can see it plainly.  She wishes, not for the first time, that Hera could ever understand that Zeus’ dalliances aren’t about her, not at all.  He finds no fault in her as his wife or queen.  But she cannot see that his infidelity has no bearing on how he feels about her.

It’s really not Athena’s place, as Zeus’  ‘daughter’ he bore without Hera’s help, to discuss the matter.  She’s considering doing it anyway.  Her miscalculation with the breast milk earlier was… not her finest moment.  After Erichthonius, Athena had supposed that any mother might care for any child… and she’d been correct, when Hera had seen Alcides as just another child, rather than her enemy.  But Athena still feels confident in her ability to make strategic decisions about these Olympian personalities, and she’s nearly convinced that things would be better off if Hera knew the truth about this bizarre situation they’re in together – the lonely king of heaven; his hurting wife; the imaginary friend who upended so much of the natural order of things.  

While Athena is thinking this, Hera continues speaking.  “If I’d had better reflexes – quick and clever, like one of his favorite daughters – I would have dashed the little bastard’s precious brains out on the floor and ended it then and there.”

Athena fights to keep from rolling her eyes.   _Melodramatics_.  But she’s trying to be diplomatic, so she keeps her demeanor remains the same: calm, faintly contrite, and more-than-faintly exasperated.

“My queen, he is an infant. Killing him would be somewhat beneath you.”

“He’s a bastard. Another one, among a long list of – what, hundreds?  Thousands? You brought a bastard child, proof of my failed marriage, into my house and gave him to me to nurse as I slept.   And behold: Zeus’ betrayal, painted across the sky for all to see and mock me, for all eternity.  That’s a new one.  This infant humiliated me publicly before he was even old enough to stand.”

Athena sighs.  “Queen Hera, no one thinks of this as a reflection of you.  I think… people know better, by now.”

“I ought to go to his cradle now and murder him – but of course, you’d stand in my way.  And if not you, then his father.  I have no doubts who he would favor, given a choice between one of his bastard sons; or his wife.”

This much is incorrect, and Athena is certain.  Zeus enjoys his lovers, and promotes his offspring whether legitimate or not, but there is only one Queen of Olympus, and everyone knows it.  Everyone, perhaps, except the queen herself.  “He doesn’t see it that way, as a choice –”

“You dare to lecture  _me_  on how my husband sees things?! On the same day you give me my enemy to nurse?  You presume far too much,” Hera hisses, and Athena falls silent.  Perhaps she  _has_ overstepped.

Hera’s lip curls in contempt and she turns her back to Athena.  “I can’t stop him from being a hero, I’m sure.  And I can’t make the father behave with honor.  So I’m going to make that bastard’s life miserable,” she says, still calm and flat.  “I will make him suffer as I have never made another soul suffer before.  I will set aside my duties as a goddess for the duration of his mortal life, and dedicate myself to bringing him unhappiness.  And I will do my utmost to ensure that the final thing he sees with his precious bastard eyes, is this abomination painted across the sky.  The cost of his existence.”

Athena is relieved to hear the heavy footfalls of Demeter.  The elder goddess strides into the room, spots Athena, and narrows her eyes briefly.  

“I came as you asked, sister – am I interrupting?”

“No, Demeter, Athena was just leaving,” Hera says, waving a hand.  

Athena bows.  “And so I go.  And I do apologize.”

Hera doesn’t reply. Demeter, also, doesn’t say anything further to Hera as she approaches her sister the queen, still seated facing the Milky Way.

Athena leaves sedately, but her mind is churning.  Something has clearly changed.  There have been any number of lovers, who have had any number of bastard children – as Hera has guessed, there could be any number from dozens to hundreds.  Hera has typically responded to all of them with identical flames of rage and vengefulness… but this time, she has gone icy cold with hatred.  Athena doesn’t know if it’s because of her own miscalculation, or if this thousandth-and-one demigod was simply one too many.  But it’s clear that it’s different, this time.

It could be a good thing. The three of them have performed this dance of deception and unhappiness for far too long, and nothing has improved. Perhaps this push was needed – then the whole mess can finally be brought to a head, and the three of them can be freed from the unending melodramatics.

Athena is certain that, one way or another, this latest demigod will be the last one that Hera tolerates to exist.  She isn’t excessively concerned for the infant – the babe does have godly powers, now, and he’s practically guaranteed to die as the world’s greatest hero, since Hera has made it her personal goal to set fearsome obstacles before him. Yes, life will be difficult for little Alcides – but if he survives it, he may well grow to be quite a glory.


	5. Ares Aphneios

Kresios is a lovely mountain in springtime – small, but covered in flowers.  It’s a little distance off the main road, so it’s quiet and peaceful.  If one had to choose a place to die… this is as good a choice as any.

Artemis has exited the cave in the side of the mountain… she walks over to a clearing, and begins preparing what is unmistakably a pyre.

Hermes left a little while afterwards, cupping a tiny, deep blue soul in his hands.

Ares… is still within.

Since the other two have left, Athena dares to approach the mouth of the cave and peer inside.  The scene is how she imagined: sad.  

Ares is sobbing over the corpse of one of his lovers… Aerope, if Athena remembers right.  The god’s towering, heavy form is supporting the woman’s slighter frame.  A cloth covers her face.  Ares’ other arm is supporting a tiny infant, and here is the surprise: the baby isn’t squalling.  It’s eating, hungrily, from the dead woman’s breasts.  A bit macabre, at a glance, but Athena finds herself moved.  The mother died in childbirth; it seems that even Artemis could not save her.  But in a desperate bid to save his son, Ares has used his limited capacity for nurturing magic to produce milk anyway.  

He must be intending to raise the boy.  Ares has numerous children, but he’s never yet raised one.  Eros had sort of… arrived, a young boy already.  Phobos and Deimos were adopted.  Most of his children with mortals were raised by their mothers alone, though Ares was a regular presence in their lives.  If he is to raise this child himself, he will be breaking new ground; as new to the concept as Athena had been.

She could enter the cave and offer him advice she’d gained from her experience with Erichthonius. She can speak confidently, now, of cradles and nappies.  She can advise him at  _great_  length about obtaining goat milk for the baby.

Perhaps later.  Much of the gods’ various animosities towards each other have purged themselves fully over the course of the Trojan War… the voyage of Odysseus wrapped up several others.  The exposure, at long last, of the secret origin of Athena has created an unprecedented understanding among them all.  The resentment and rivalry between Ares and Athena, while not fully healed, has finally been addressed, and it’s possible they can coexist peacefully in the future.

Athena herself has come a long way.  One need only look at the small stone snakeheads – gifts from Medusa – as they garnish the original aegis of Amalthea.  She has learned much, over the centuries, about how to care for people.

And that’s how she knows she has no place in the midst of Ares’ grief.  No matter the good advice she can give him.  There is something he needs that she cannot offer to him.  He needs someone else, and Artemis and Hermes are busy…

Athena stops, briefly, by a temple to Demeter, and removes a sacrificial flask of goat’s milk, murmuring an explanation to the goddess before going to Olympus.  

She approaches Queen Hera softly, tapping upon her doorframe to announce her presence.  

Hera turns, and offers a polite nod.  The two of them are on significantly better terms now, post-Troy and post-imaginary-friend-revelation.

“Ah, Athena,” the queen says.  “You’ve come to see me?”

“Not for myself, Queen Hera,” Athena says, offering the flask of milk to her.  “It’s Ares.  Your son needs his mother right now.”


End file.
